


Mary and Sherlock and the undoing (or not) of TSoT

by tiltedsyllogism



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:23:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiltedsyllogism/pseuds/tiltedsyllogism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>some speculation on the perspective Mary is bringing into her (almost-)deadly confrontation with Sherlock in His Last Vow... and the reasons why I don't think her decision to shoot Sherlock has to mean that the apparent affection between them in The Sign of Three wasn't real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mary and Sherlock and the undoing (or not) of TSoT

  1.   


There are a lot of things about HLV I’m still working through, but there is one thing I keep seeing that I’m pretty sure I disagree with, so I’m going to throw out my counter-reading and see what y’all think.

In untangling the spatial and medical logistics of Mary shooting Sherlock, I’ve noticed, the people who are touching on the emotional dimension of that scene mostly seem to be taking for granted (whatever they then do with it next) that Mary’s evident affection for Sherlock from the first two episodes is either part of the facade or at least much shallower than we thought - or else is a point of flat-out inconsistency: that there’s no way to put together her demonstrations of warmth and intimacy surrounding the wedding with shooting Sherlock in HLV. And I completely disagree.

Here’s my thing about this, and let me preface this by saying that I have not yet rewatched the episode and can barely stay grounded for ten minutes in what I  _feel_  about it, let alone what I think. (excited to keep reading? okay, good.)

So Mary had this other life, which she has for reasons to which we are not privy (on which: argh, but let’s set that aside for now).  Whatever her motivations for getting out of that game, which I can only imagine predates her relationship with John Watson, her new life is centered on him. What she has with him is, I think we are given to believe, what she really wanted.

Now, we are all vulnerable to change and loss, especially when we build our happiness on others. but Mary, who knows how easily people can be taken out of life, is no doubt more keenly and consistently aware of this fact than most of us; and as someone who (probably) went undercover, and who has tried to remake her entire life in earnest, she also has no illusions about how the lives that we have made for ourselves can be pulled down around us.  I read philosophy that teaches me this, and I have trouble sleeping; I cannot even imagine what it would be like to carry it around as knowledge gleaned first-hand from experience.

So, given that context, it makes sense to me that Mary would be willing to shoot* Sherlock to preserve John, whom she clearly loves very deeply and who is the bedrock of her new life, her new self, on which everything else rests. Because, without the bedrock that is her relationship with John, she does’t have ANYTHING: not her comfortable intimacy with Sherlock, not her job as a nurse, not her house in the suburbs where she’s friends with the neighbors, not the self who meaningfully inhabits any of those roles.  

I’m not even sure that I think this makes her more selfish than other characters.  I don’t say this to minimize Sherlock’s sacrifice(s) for John, which I think are incredible and are clearly funded by a profound and selfless love.  But I get little shades of Cyrano de Bergerac off of Sherlock’s sacrifice: in giving everything up, I still have my  _panache_.  Sherlock’s never much cared what the world thinks, but the way he sees himself has always been very important to him, and he is, in the second half of s3 at least, happy (for at least some values of “happy”) to see himself as having made sacrifices for John’s happiness and well-being. Mary’s life experiences, whatever we think of them, however we value them (WHATEVER THEY ARE, but anyhow, I do think we have enough of a general picture to know this) have made her into a person who cannot buy into this kind of narrative about herself.  She has learned that identity is not permanently inscribed anywhere.  If she loses John, there is nothing of value to her that she gets to hold onto.  


Anyone with Mary’s training and experience would be very familiar with choosing - and very quickly - the “least worst” option: preserve the primary object, at whatever (sometimes very real and significant) cost.  That’s what I see her doing when she shoots Sherlock.

*or even to kill, although my relationship to all the complicated evidence is that, in a show where Sherlock’s perspective is paramount, if he thinks she wasn’t shooting to kill, then it is legitimate (though not decisive) to believe that she wasn’t. In my world, it isn’t on the same spectrum of possibility as putting someone on hold or otherwise trying to buy time for later explanation, but I am willing for the moment to believe that it is for her.




 


End file.
